


Electric Shock

by jperalta



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Anger, F/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-05-04 03:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14583540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jperalta/pseuds/jperalta
Summary: Jake begins exhibiting symptoms of PTSD after the Figgis/Florida affair.





	1. Chapter 1

It was his first official day back following all that had happened in Florida, and Jake was trying desperately to keep his feet from tapping. But whenever he would hold his feet flat on the floor, he could still feel the sensation of electricity pulsing through his legs. He looked at his hands and noticed the tips of his fingers quaking slightly. He hadn’t really stopped feeling like this for a few days, at the least.

He looked back up to his computer and in his peripheral vision could see Amy looking at him - a look of utter concern on her face - and he felt terrible. He didn’t want to worry her. He didn’t want to worry anyone. He just wanted everything to feel normal again, but this pain in the pit of his stomach wasn’t allowing him to feel okay. He clutched his stomach as another burst of electricity shot through his body.

“Jake,” Amy began gently, “what are you feeling?”

He winced. What was he supposed to say - that he felt like he was dying? He couldn’t say that to her. Not when she was so happy to finally have him back. He wanted to be okay for her. He wanted to make her think everything with him was fine, and that they could just go back to how everything was beforehand - when everything was perfect and he could sleep at night.

“Jake?”

His eyes shot up to hers, and he felt the guilt radiating through his entire body. _What’s wrong with you, Jake, why can’t you just be better?_

“I’m fine,” he squeaked out. “It’s just stomach cramps - must have eaten something weird for lunch.”

He left his desk and ran towards the bathroom. There was static and electricity and shock running through his body, and he felt sick to his stomach. He was hardly able to get into the bathroom and lock the door before he puked. He thought he could hear whispering outside of the door, but he couldn’t focus his attention enough to listen. He was too physically weak and he let himself lean against the bathroom wall, breathing deeply and hoping he wouldn’t puke again. There were tears on his face now. All he wanted was to disappear. The idea of going back to work made him queasy all over again, and he leaned back over the toilet and let himself get sick for a second time.

When he finally headed back over to his desk, he could see everyone looking at him out of the corner of their eyes, as if they wanted to see how he was doing without making direct eye contact. It all made him feel terrible. He wiped his face with his hands and tried his best to act like his body wasn’t still shaking. He had hoped that maybe since he had vomited he would feel better - at least less nauseous - but when he sat back down at his desk, he felt exactly the same.

“Jake, what’s going on?” Amy pleaded.

“Nothing. I’m fine. Just let me do my work.”

Terry came over and attempted to put a hand on Jake’s shoulder, but when he did Jake just flinched away. He didn’t want to be touched. “Jake, it’s ok,” Terry said, “you don’t have to pretend that things aren’t how they are.”

“I said I’m fine,” Jake said, a bit louder this time. He saw Charles heading over and he wanted more than anything to be alone.

“Hey,” Charles said quietly - making Jake feel guilty about how upset he felt at everyone. “Hey Jake, why don’t we go outside and talk?”

Nausea and anger was welling up inside of him as he tried to take in oxygen. “I don’t want to talk. Please can everyone just leave me alone?” He was practically yelling as he stood up and looked around at all the concerned faces. He hated that he was concerning people. He wanted to be able to just quietly sit back down, but the energy was flowing through him too quickly. He felt his whole body shaking and the world looked like it was spinning far too fast.

There were a few seconds of silence, and then the phone rang. He knew it was irrational, but Jake couldn’t help but to think that it was Figgis, calling to tell him that he was coming back to get him, and that this time he’d do whatever he could to make sure that at the very least, he would never see Amy or Charles or anyone ever again. He knew it was irrational, but that’s where his brained jumped to at that point in time. He knew it was wrong, but when the phone rang, he felt the world slipping away from him as he picked up his computer monitor and slammed it on the phone until it was silent.

No one said a word. Jake just stood there vibrating as he stared at the small amounts of smoke steaming up from the broken equipment. He hated himself more than he ever had before.

It was then when Holt walked into the room and saw the mess on Jake’s desk, with Jake standing up in front of it and everyone around him startled and a few feet back, as if a bomb had gone off.

“What the hell is going on here?” He bellowed. Everyone turned around from him as he walked up to Jake and looked him in the eyes, then looked down at the mess and walked around the desk. “Peralta, go into my office and shut the door.”

Jake managed to pull himself off the main floor and into Holt’s office, and as he did, he could feel everything closing in on him. He wouldn’t doubt it if Holt fired him, or if Amy was so afraid of him now that she left him. He thought of everything that could possibly go wrong as he sat in Holt’s office and began to dig his fingernails into his palms in an attempt to take out some of his anger at himself.

 

***

Outside of Holt’s office, everyone was silent and looking down. Holt looked around, furious and confused. “Could everyone please just get back to work while I deal with whatever just happened?” Everyone scurried back to their desks except for Amy, who walked right up to Holt. “Santiago, don’t try to protect him. You saw him just damage government property. That’s not okay.”

“Captain, I know, and I’m really sorry about that, and I know he is, too.”

“Let him fight his own battles, Santiago.”

“Captain, please, just give me a minute.”

Holt held his ground and looked her in the eyes. She took in a breath. It was hard for her to confront him about anything and he knew that, so he heard her out.

“Jake hasn’t been acting right lately. Whenever I wake up I can tell he’s always awake. He doesn’t think I know and he acts like he’s sleeping, but I know. He looks exhausted all the time. Sometimes he’s not even in the bed, and I don’t know where he goes. Maybe just in the other room - maybe around the city. I don’t know and it worries me.” She twirls the pen she’s holding in her hand and clicks it a few times. “Captain, all I’m asking is - please don’t fire him. He needs help. He’s a nervous wreck all the time and he can’t focus anymore and his temper is close to nothing. Please, just give him some time off so I can try to help him figure things out. I… I don’t want to ask too much of you and I’m sorry he did what he did. But you know he’s not usually violent like that, and I’m afraid for him. I want him back as much as you. I’m sorry, really, I just…” her voice quieted down a bit as she shifted her body weight and grabbed one arm with the other. “I don’t know what to do.” She bowed her head, as if to signal that she was done.

Holt looked down at her cheeks, slightly flushed as she clenched her jaw repeatedly in an attempt to restrain her emotions. He thought for a minute before saying, “Okay, Santiago, go back to your work. I’ll take it easy. Just focus on yourself for now.”

She looked at him again, and with a deep sigh, turned to go sit down.


	2. Anywhere

When Holt entered the room, Jake was visibly shaking, his jaw clenching and unclenching as his fingers picked at each other. He tried to relax by putting his hands on the table, but all he could see was his fingers furiously shaking. It all made him feel guilty somehow so he folded his hands under his arms. He closed his eyes.

“Captain Holt,” he began, “I can’t begin to explain how s-sorry I am.” He could feel his teeth chattering from anxiety and he wanted to smack himself but repressed the urge and squeezed his hands tighter with his arms. “I should go. I’m fired. It’s okay. It’s…” His voice left him as he continued to wince and shake and just focused on trying to breathe, but it wasn’t working.

Holt sat across from Jake. “You’re not fired, Jake. I know things have been rough for you since you’ve gotten back to New York. I can’t hold that against you. I am, however, going to request that you take some time off. Perhaps a month or so. Get some help, take it easy. Get on some medication if you need to. Amy is here for you, I know it, and so am I. If you need anything while you’re gone, feel free to call.” He looked up to Jake whose eyes were slightly open now and welling with tears.

“I’m so scared,” Jake said, “I can’t sleep at all and I hate that I’m like this. I hate it and I hate my…” He was going to say he hated himself, but he didn’t want to put that out yet. “I hate it. I want it to stop.” What he meant was at this point he wanted his life to stop, but he wouldn’t dare voice that out loud to Holt - not right now, when everything already felt so fragile.

“I know,” Holt said quietly. Jake looked away from him and focused his attention on the carpeting in Holt’s office. “You can stay the rest of the day if you would like - to gather anything you might want to bring. Just remember this isn’t permanent. It’s just… a break.”

Jake nodded slightly. “Okay,” he whispered weakly. “I’m… going to go back to my desk now.”

***

A few hours later at his desk, things began to spike again, but this time it felt more severe. It started with the numbness in his hands, then the furious shaking returned even harder than before. He was staring at his hands when Amy asked if he was okay, but he couldn’t entirely make out her voice or respond. Amy jumped up, went over to Holt, then came back after a few seconds.

“Come with me,” she said strongly.

“I… I can’t move,” he said.

“Yes, you can. We’re just going a few feet into Holt’s office. We’re just going to talk for a bit - just the two of us.”

She helped him out of his chair and while he was walking, he felt like he was flying because he couldn’t entirely feel his feet. He knew everyone was looking at him again, but his vision wouldn’t focused enough to let him see their faces.

When they got into Holt’s office, Amy let go of Jake’s arm for a moment while she pulled the blinds down in front of the windows and dimmed the lights. Jake started off leaning against Holt’s desk for support, but soon found that wasn’t enough. He turned his back to the desk and felt himself fall to the floor.

“Whoa, whoa,” Amy said as she rushed over and held him just before he hit the ground. She put her hands on his cheeks. “Jake, what’s going on, talk to me.”

But he didn’t know how he could convey what he was feeling to her. “It feels like I’m dying,” he whispered. She held one of his hands with her own. “This has been happening… so much.” He clutched his stomach and thought he was going to puke again, but instead he began hyperventilating. “Oh my God, oh my God, Amy, what is happening to me?” He started to claw at one forearm with the other. “Make it stop, please.”

Amy was trying not to cry, but seeing Jake break down like this in front of her was incredibly difficult. She wanted to hide her own shaking hands. She crouched on the ground next to him, grabbed his arms, and forced him to stop hurting himself. He put his head onto her shoulder and she felt how clammy his skin was. They stayed in that position for a few minutes - Jake hyperventilating and Amy squeezing him tighter than she thought she had the strength for. She ran her hands through his hair and could only keep repeating “you’ll be okay” softly as her shirt became wet with his tears. He bunched parts of her shirt in his hands as he had one of the worst panic attacks Amy had ever witnessed. “It’s okay, we’re going to get you help. It’s going to be okay.”

He could hear her but couldn’t respond. He felt like a child needing to be taken care of and although he hated it and hated himself for needing it, he was so grateful that Amy was still here with him.

After several more minutes, his breathing began to slow as the panic attack passed. Amy reached to her side and grabbed a bottle of water she had brought in and gave it to him. She brushed his hair with her fingers and pushed some small beads of sweat off of his forehead.

“How are you still here?” Jake asked, breathing deeply. “How could you want to stay here with me?” He took the bottle and chugged half of it, his hands still shaking a bit.

Amy grabbed his leg tightly with her hand. “Jake, I’m not going anywhere.” He looked at her with so much love and sadness. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”


	3. Oxygen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake goes to therapy.

Jake was sitting in a chair that felt a little too low to the ground and just a bit too soft. He looked around and saw several potted plants, and a big bay window that looked out over the city. He knew it was meant to be charming, but he couldn’t help wondering if anyone could see him - if anyone across the street in another building or somewhere else could see him. He sank lower into his chair.

“Jake, do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Said the woman wearing large glasses and a burgundy blazer in the chair across from him. Her chair seemed at a normal height, and he began to wonder why he was becoming envious of her chair - as if maybe if he could sit in her chair instead, he would feel fine and wouldn’t need to be here anymore.

“I’m not gonna lie,” he muttered as he began his nervous habit of picking at his fingernails, “I’m kind of scared.”

The woman shifted in her chair, uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again in the opposite direction. “Most people feel nervous when they first start.”

He faked a quick smile, made eye contact briefly, and then instantly regretted it and looked back down to his fingers. His nails were now all gone - picked down to stubs. He started to pick at the skin on his knuckles, then, remembering where he was, made his hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets. His left foot began to tap.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. He found himself wishing that she would just say something, anything, even if it was just asking him what he thought of the weather.

After a bit, he gave in. “What are we supposed to do?” He was worried he sounded annoyed, and he didn’t want to, so he added, “I really don’t know what to do.” He looked down slightly and noticed his chest rising and falling a bit quickly. He put his hand over his chest in an attempt to make it stop, but noticed his fingers were shaking. He closed his eyes. Not right now - please just let me get through this hour.

“Why don’t you start by trying to tell me what you’re feeling right now?” Her voice was calm. How is she so calm? He knew why - it was because she was probably able to eat a full lunch today, or to get more than a few hours of sleep last night, or do her job without exploding at everyone.

“I feel… I don’t know. I don’t feel good.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Can you describe your physical symptoms?”

He looked out the window and saw that the sky was becoming more gray with every second. “Right now I just feel shaky. And kind of sick.”

“To your stomach?”

“Yeah.”

She shifted again and gave him an empathetic gaze that made him feel as though something was rising up from his gut. He took in a sharp breath in an attempt to keep whatever was happening from happening, but when he did this he flinched.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked at his still-tapping foot. “It’s not always like this.”

“What do you mean like this?”

“It’s… sometimes it gets a lot worse.”

“Your physical symptoms?”

His hand twitched. “Yeah.” She was quiet again, and he knew she wasn’t going to say anything until he explained. “Sometimes it feels like there’s electricity going through my whole body. Sometimes my chest tenses up so much that I can’t breathe - all I can do is try to go somewhere until it passes, until I cry so much that I feel dry. Sometimes my body feels so weak that I’ll almost fall over, or I’ll feel so sick to my stomach that I’ll end up puking. Sometimes it’s not that bad, but lately it has been.”

“How often do you feel like that?”

He bowed his head a bit. He knew he shouldn’t feel ashamed, but he couldn’t help but to feel as though something within him - in his brain - was broken.

“Um,” he picked at the skin at the tops of his fingers, “it changes, but maybe twice a day or something.

“It sounds like you haven’t really been having a good time lately, right?”

He laughed nervously. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

“What’s another way to put it?”

“That… I mean, I feel like I’m hardly living. I’m barely existing and I’m not even doing anything right now. I was.. I had to take time off of work to get whatever this is under control.”

“Do you know what this is?”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” He closed his eyes and instantly felt bad. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be rude. I’m just -”

“You’re easily irritated.”

“Yes.”

“And you find yourself unable to focus. You remember and relive things that happened to you and you wish you didn’t. You - have panic attacks.”

He paused and looked at her. “It’s that what those are? Those moments when I feel like I’m going to puke or die?”

She nodded. He took in a deep breath and let it out, and found that it actually felt okay. “Is that, somehow, a relief for you to hear?”

He blurted out “yes” quickly, then said, “I guess I suspected that’s what they were, but I’ve never really had them, you know, diagnosed. I mean, it still sucks that they happen so much, but I feel, I don’t know -- less insane, I guess.”

“What you are experiencing is PTSD.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“It can be very scary, but with therapy and possibly medication, you can get better.”

Jake knew that’s what she was going to say, yet when she said it, he still found tears welling up in his eyes.

“Why the tears?”

When she asked, a few fell off his eyelids. “It’s just - nice to hear that, I guess. Sometimes it feels like it’s never going to get better and that there’s no-”

“No point in trying?”

“Yeah.”

“Jake, there’s always a point in trying. Trying is what makes you able to get better. And you took a big step just by coming in today. I’m glad you did, and I’m sure your friends and coworkers are glad you did as well.”

He took in another breath and let it out. He felt like he was able to feel the oxygen in his lungs for the first time in a while.


End file.
